Re: [gentoo-user] yet another eeepc story

[Matt Harrison]

Neil Bothwick wrote:
> On Sun, 10 May 2009 18:57:28 +0100, Matt Harrison wrote:
>
>> I'm wanting to try gentoo on my eeepc 900, but I'm failing at some very
>> basic level. I've got an external CD drive attached and booted from the
>> current i686-2008 minimal cd. Unfortunately this doesn't work with the
>> wired or wireless network devices so I'm unable to grab the stage3 and
>> portage tarballs.
>
> That CD is too old, either use one of the snapshots or something like
> eexubuntu to install Gentoo.

Ah ok, I had totally forgotten there are the snapshots. I'm getting a 
new image that's less than a month old now. Hopefully it will have a 
more recent kernel.

>> I was going to put them on a CD then work on the network stuff later
>> with a more recent kernel, then I realised that the SSDs in use won't
>> really like compilations being done (apart from it being achingly slow
>> on this processor).
>
> SSDs use wear levelling, so they aren't subject to the same write
> restrictions as more basic flash devices. But if you're still nervous
> about this, point PORTAGE_TMPDIR to a USB or SD device. I've been running
> Gentoo on my Eee for a year,running ~x86 so plenty of compiling, and no
> noticeable problems with the SD card I use for PORTAGE_TMPDIR.
>
> As for compilation times, I was pleasantly surprised. It's not fast, but
> a lot faster than I expected.

You've just about swayed me. I'll use an old usb stick for the 
PORTAGE_TMPDIR and maybe use distcc if it seems to help.

The only other thing I was thinking about is: If the appropriate drivers 
  for this eee900 are indeed in the 2.6.28 series, can you provide 
pointers to the locations of necessary options? I have read here and 
there that I need to use the athk(?) driver for wireless, and there is 
such thing as the eeepc_laptop module, but I have no idea about 
configuring a kernel for them.

Much appreciated.

~M